Larry McMurtry Recalls His Hollywood Years

The Pulitzer-prize winning novelist Larry McMurtry has published a new memoir about his experiences as a screenwriter, appropriately titled, “Hollywood: a Third Memoir.” It’s a slim volume, dryly funny, detailing McMurtry’s experiences with the movie adaptations of his novels (“The Last Picture Show,” “Terms of Endearment”), along with his scribe-for-hire work. Here’s a passage about one of his lesser credits, the 2002 western “Johnson’s County War,” featuring the unlikely cast of Tom Berenger, Luke Perry and Burt Reynolds:

“Before the filming of “Johnson County War,” which was shot in Canada, I watched, in my role as executive producer (the big cheese in TV, unlike film, where the producer is the big cheese), no fewer than one hundred and eighty audition tapes of Canadian actors giving their all in the five or six lines that had been selected to tape. What the experience taught me was to respect the desperation of actors — working, as I’ve already said, mainly out of fear. Watching those tapes was a Dostoyevskian experience, not one to be quickly absorbed or easily shut out of one’s mind.

For lesser actors, much of their career is doing just such takes for very minimal reward.

The film had its moments but very few of the actors had theirs — mainly the star, Tom Berenger, who insisted on singing as he was being murdered. We tried to discourage him but he persuaded us and I suspect now that he was right: absurdity is better than nothing, in the movies.”